Last month, the Department of Industry's submission to the Energy White Paper pitched Small Modular Reactors as an energy solution for isolated areas in Australia, where there is no access to the electricity grid.

"It was not the deployment of the technology that posed the biggest problem – it was that there were no customers."

He added:

“The worst thing to do is get ahead of the market.”

On the last day of March, Babcock and Wilcox CEO Jim Ferland warned that they were cutting back on their expenditure on SMRs, despite the fact that they received up to $225 million in loan grants from the U.S. government for the SMR development in Charlotte.

Taxpayer associations are concerned, as are the U.S. House and Senate committees.

The Charlotte Business Journal reports that:

'B&W has been unable to find an investor or investor group to take on a 70 percent to 80 percent share of its joint venture to develop a 180-megawatt reactor to produce electricity... The eventual market for the reactor... appears weaker than initially projected.'

It should be noted that nowhere in this article does Chen mention "small" reactors. However, Australian proponents of 'small' reactors welcomed this article, as the Thorium Small Nuclear Reactor is the favourite type proposed for Australia from all 15 possible small designs.

So, while we're being told that China is racing ahead in the scramble to get these wonderful SMRs, in fact, China has been very much encouraged and helped into this by the U.S. Department of Energy.

This is understandable, seeing that for China it is a government project, with no required expectation of being commercially viable.

In their enthusiasm for China's thorium nuclear project, writers neglected to mention the sobering points that Stephen Chen made in his South China Morning Post article, such as:

'Researchers working on the project said they were under unprecedented 'war-like' pressure to succeed and some of the technical challenges they faced were difficult, if not impossible to solve.'

Australia's SMR enthusiasts discount the known problems of SMRs. Some brief reminders from the September 2013 report, from the United States' Institute for Energy and Environmental Research:

'Economics: $90 billion manufacturing order book could be required for mass production of SMRs ...the industry’s forecast of relatively inexpensive individual SMRs is predicated on major orders and assembly line production.'

'SMRs will lose the economies of scale of large reactors.'

'SMRs could reduce some safety risks but also create new ones.'

'It breaks, you bought it: no thought is evident on how to handle SMR recalls.'

'These units, the argument goes, are very well suited to Australian conditions. Strategically located, SMRs of 25 to 300 megawatts can enhance supply security and improve the overall resilience of the grid ...The case for SMRs also rests on their use being a much lower investment risk because of their lower capital costs, the relative speed with which they can be installed and the fact that their capacity can be readily increased, Lego-like, on an established site ... SMRs could be in operation by around 2022.'

So, the SMRs could (eventually) line up along the East Coast, connected to the grid. Or they could go to remote inland sites.

Then there is that other agenda — a foot in the door for the bigger nuclear power industry.

There's a bewildering array of nuclear technology companies, from USA, Japan, Russia, France, China, South Korea — all jostling for markets. They have spent up big in development, promotion and lobbying, over many years. They, and Australia's uranium industry, are not going to give up now and hand over the market to the Small Modular Reactor — the undeveloped, untested, new kid on the block.

Still, Big Nuclear might like it, if a scientifically illiterate government such as Australia's can be persuaded to let that expensive new kid in. It could be a foot in the door for the whole nuclear fuel cycle and another foot in the door for the American nuclear weapons industry.

Even Westinghouse might be pleased if Australia did buy into SMRs, as it may facilitate their plans for empire in that quaintly termed 'nuclear decommissioning' industry.